THE FRIEND

PHOEBE*, 17, WENT TO A PARTY WITH HER SQUAD ON A SATUR­DAY NIGHT. AF­TER A RECK­LESS DE­CI­SION TO TAKE DRUGS, ONE OF THEM NEVER MADE IT HOME.

“Madi­son* loved par­ty­ing. She was al­ways the first on the dance floor and the last to leave. I al­ways en­vied that about her ’cos I’ve al­ways been the qui­eter one in our group. One night at a party, she dragged us all into a room and of­fered us some pills. I was com­pletely shocked – I had no idea she was even into that stuff! I said no and I felt sick about the whole thing. A few of my friends said yes, which was re­ally, re­ally dis­ap­point­ing. Every­one went wild that night. At one point we looked around and Madi­son was gone. We had no idea what had hap­pened to her, we just as­sumed her mum picked her up. Days passed and I hadn’t spo­ken to her – I was so mad about the drugs that I kinda wanted to keep my dis­tance TBH. Then I got a call from my bestie, telling me that af­ter Madi­son left that night she jumped off a roof and died. I can’t even ex­plain how I felt. You hear about stuff like that all the time, but you don’t re­alise how tragic it can be un­til it hap­pens to some­one close to you. Madi­son didn’t just ruin her own life, she ru­ined all of ours and her fam­ily’s lives too. Go­ing to her fu­neral and see­ing how dev­as­tated her fam­ily and friends were was one of the hard­est things I’ve ever had to do, es­pe­cially know­ing that I was there with her when she took the drugs. I still look at our self­ies from that night and her smile haunts me. One minute she was there with us, then af­ter tak­ing drugs just to have a good night, she was gone.”